After almost six months of operation, experiments at the LHC are starting to see signs of potentially new and interesting effects. 

Image of a 7 TeV proton-proton collision in CMS producing more than 100 charged particles.(picture/CERN)

In results announced by the CMS collaboration today, correlations have been observed between particles produced in 7 TeV proton-proton collisions.

In some of the LHC’s proton-proton collisions, a hundred or more particles can be produced. The CMS collaboration has studied such collisions by measuring angular correlations between the particles as they fly away from the point of impact, and this has revealed that some of the particles are intimately linked in a way not seen before in proton collisions.

Having re-measured known physics in time for the summer conferences, the LHC experiments are now starting to probe new ground. ATLAS recently extended limits on excited quarks, while the LHCb detector has demonstrated its capacity by observing atom-like particles built from beauty quarks and antiquarks.

Source:CERN Website